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Reception
Welcome to Reception!
Badger Class - Mrs Button
Hedgehog Class - Mrs Dolbear
Hello and a big warm welcome to our Reception family!
We’re so excited to have you and your child join us as they begin their learning journey at Prestwood Infant School. Reception is a special and important year, full of fun, discovery and making new friends.
Our aim is to “Ignite the SPARK” and create a happy, caring and supportive environment where every child can grow in confidence and develop a love for learning.
What to Expect...
Reception is all about learning through play, exploring the world around us, and developing those early skills that will help us as we move through school. Here are a few simple expectations for our school:
· We support each other
· We take pride in ourselves and our school
· We strive to achieve
· We show respect
· We show kindness
What We’ll Be Learning This Year...
We have some wonderful topics planned to help your child make sense of the world around them:
Autumn Term
· Autumn 1: Marvellous Me We’ll spend time getting to know each other, learning about ourselves and our families, and celebrating what makes us unique. We’ll talk about different families, cultures and traditions.
· Autumn 2: Let’s Celebrate This half term is all about celebrations! We’ll explore festivals and special days from around the world and talk about how different people celebrate in different ways.
Spring Term
· Spring 1 & 2: Prestwood and Beyond We begin close to home by learning all about Prestwood focusing on our school and our village. We’ll even go for a walk around the village! Then we’ll gradually expand our learning to think about the wider world and even outer space, discovering planets, stars and rockets along the way.
Summer Term
· Summer 1 & 2: Growing and Changing As the year draws to a close, we reflect on how much we’ve grown, in height, in confidence and in learning! We’ll look at how people and places change over time, and explore life cycles of plants and animals. It’s a lovely way to end the year before we move on to Year 1.
We’re really looking forward to watching your child learn and grow this year. Please don’t hesitate to speak to us if you have any questions or need a little help settling in.
Here’s to a brilliant Reception year at Prestwood!
Weekly Reminders
PE Days -
Thursday and Friday
Reading -
Please ensure your child’s reading book and reading record are in school every day, as we may have opportunities for extra reading sessions during the week.
Home Learning
Reception Welcome Presentation
Curriculum Overview Reception 2025/2026
Useful Information
Key Dates
8th December - Christmas Play @ 1.45
9th December - Christmas Play @ 9.15
3rd November 2025
We’ve had another wonderful week in Reception – the children have been full of enthusiasm and curiosity as we continue our learning journey through Autumn 2!
Maths
This week, the children have been deepening their understanding of the purpose of counting to find out how many objects there are altogether. They have been practising 1:1 correspondence, counting each object carefully as they move or tag them, and reinforcing their understanding of cardinality – that the last number they say tells us how many there are in total.
A key focus has been exploring 5 as a quantity, linking the number to the five fingers on one hand. The children have been representing numbers to 5 using both their fingers and the Hungarian number pattern (number 5 dice spot pattern), helping them recognise the ‘fiveness’ of 5 and preparing them to explore how numbers are composed and related to one another.
Phonics
In phonics, we have met some new characters to help us remember our sounds:
Haz the Hen – h sound
Bumble the Bee – b sound
Flick the Fly – f sound
Lily the Ladybird – l sound
The children have been practising reading and writing words containing these sounds, using the sound it, squash it, say it method to blend when reading, and say it, stretch it, sound it when segmenting for writing. By the end of this week, every child will have been issued with a reading book. Please see inside on the first page of the Reading Record for further details on reading days.
English
In English, we have been creating our own stories using a story sack filled with interesting characters – a lady, a baby, a wolf, a pirate, and a chef! The children have enjoyed inventing their own imaginative tales using familiar story language such as Once upon a time, One day, Unfortunately, Luckily, and Finally.
Topic
As many of the children enjoyed watching firework displays over the weekend, we continued our theme of Bonfire Night, exploring sounds, colours, and the excitement of fireworks through art and play. We also spent time reflecting on Remembrance Day, discussing why it is important and creating thoughtful artwork to show respect.
Outdoors
Our mud kitchen has been transformed into the “Field Maple Café!” The children have loved taking on roles – setting tables, taking orders, and serving delicious mud-made treats to their friends.
Next Week
Next week, we will continue to explore different festivals celebrated around the world. If your family celebrates a particular festival, we would love to hear about it so we can include it in our learning. Please let us know!
Working Together
Song rehearsals for our Nativity performance, “It’s a Baby,” are now in full swing! The children have expressed whether they would like to have lines, and we’ve made sure their choices have been honoured. If your child has a line to say, this will be sent home shortly along with details of their role and costume suggestions. More information will follow soon, it’s already shaping up to be a wonderful performance!